Posts Tagged Sports
For god’s sake – no hierarchies in cricket!
In recent days, Indian newspapers and TV channels have been brimming of stories about Indian cricket team’s World Cup debacle. The Blue Billion got let down, “World Cup Ko-La” is selling, people cancelled their Caribbean crusades, broadcasters & advertisers lost money, no more late night TV (lot of power-saving; good for us), SMS/emails taking a dig at Team India and the list goes on and on. And of course, as usual, we all collectively as a nation set out to find out a few ‘bakras’ (scapegoats!) for our 1 week World Cup dream. Now that’s not a difficult task. We are really adept at it. The usual suspects – a foreign coach who has been in the news for not-so-right reasons, a captain (I don’t really know what to write about him) and finally we had this term “senior players”. We created a visible hierarchy in cricket. And this caught my attention.
There is this whole story about allegations that senior players in the team stifled the juniors, they mistreated them and someone said they even abused them. The senior players, of course, denied this outright. What is interesting is that how much we Indians love hierarchy. Hierarchy is perhaps as old as India. The caste system provided an overall classification of the society. Even today, we see hierarchies in offices (“yes sir”), government (“please sir”)…everywhere. I have seen deep-rooted hierarchy systems in companies which are the stalwarts of Indian business and are multi-nationals in their own right.
Now, I see the same thing in cricket. I don’t understand why should there be even a mention of a hierarchy in a sport. All that matters is talent and execution. Why should there be someone in a team who is senior and someone who is junior. By doing something like this, we regress towards a system where seniority is determined by tenures and not performance. How can we classify people as “seniors” / “juniors” based on their length of careers? If that is logical, they should perform every time (especially when India needs them the most) because they are, well, seniors. What instead should matter is performance.
Using such terms by the coach, team members or the media is just fragmenting an already rattled team and hierarchies are not going to work. It is a team and should be looked at and managed as a team. Every one is same in terms of merit, that’s why they are a part of the team. Every one has potential, which can be deployed at an individual and collective level. Let’s hold our fanaticism for a while. Let’s give Team India breathing space and time and I am sure they will strike back.
2 comments April 5, 2007
Managing the Indian Cricket Team: A Different Perspective
Teams need managers and more often than not, great teams have great managers. I reckon that the Indian cricket team is in dire need of one. For the Indian cricket team, we have two immediate managers in the form of Rahul Dravid and coach Greg Chappel (of course, we could debate the question on who wields or should wield more power and control!).
When I look at the outstandingly dismal performance by the team in recent times (even at home!), I feel compelled to understand the reasons behind it. The Indian cricket team has great individuals. We have the Great Indian Batting Line-up with Sehwag, Tendulkar, Dravid, Dhoni etc. But, inevitably it collapses every time the “Blue Billion” is glued to the TV sets.
Using the little workplace management experience that I have, I decided to use the Employee Engagement model from The Gallup Organization to understand what is happening to the Indian team. You can find a primer on the model here. Gallup’s extensive research shows that the 12 statements used in the model are the best measures of psychological commitment to a role and indicators of performance. I decided to pick up some of these statements and see how they apply to the Indian team.
The first question measures a very basic need of employees “Role Clarity”. People need to know what their role in the team/organization is. I feel role clarity in the Indian team is scarce in many quarters. You sometimes have Agarkar bowling with the new ball alongwith Zaheer Khan and you sometimes have Irfan Pathan doing the honours. Again, Irfan Pathan – is he supposed to bat or bowl or open or come 1st down or be an all-rounder or…the list goes on. The captain himself appears unclear about the level at which he should bat.
Only Dhoni, it seems, is clear about his job – “Doodh piyo, mast jiyo, aur chahe jo bhi ho, ball ko jor se maaro!”
If the role clarity is lacking, there is very little possibility of getting to work on things that you are best at. So, Dinesh Karthick comes into the team as a specialist batsman instead of a wicket-keeper and V V S Lakshman is included for a 20-20 overs game. Recognition is pretty much out of the question, given our performance. Even words of comfort are a distant dream.
Next, comes the issue of encouraging development. What development? Development happens only when you stay in the team and not out of it. Team changes, it appears, is a favourite past-time and is soon likely to be recognized as a national hobby. Every one wants to feel important and counted, but I am not very sure how the equations are within the team. Whose opinions matter and whose don’t has been a popular debate in the media in recent times.
Recent Gallup research showed that a seemingly simple statement about having a ‘best’ friend at work makes a huge difference to important business outcomes. I don’t know if the team members get the time to make deep bonds in the team. The team is far ahead of some of the leading call-centers in India in terms of attrition. Apart from our ‘stalwarts’, the remaining members hardly stay there in the team. Mr. Chapel apparently follows a very strict “Garbage-In-Garbage-Out” policy, but of course we recycle garbage!
At the pinnacle of the engagement pyramid, we talk about aspects like growth and progress. Again, this can happen if you are a full-time member of the team and not just a “visiting player”. Going by the current pace of team changes, I am sure we will have a sizeable number of cricket players whose claim-to-fame would be “played 2 test matches and 3 ODI’s” for the Great Indian Cricket Team.
There is indeed a need for greater structure in the team management. There is a need for stability. There is a need for consistency. Let’s not forget that cricketers, at the end of the day, are humans too. They have their own set of needs, explicit or implicit and these needs have to be managed for a team to be productive.
4 comments November 29, 2006
